Half Squats Are For Pussies

We are all guilty of this, so don’t bother trying to wiggle out of it. Yes, even the best of us have stacked on as many 45-pound plates as we can on the bar to see what our one-rep max is on the squat rack. But to a man, you yourself know that this is a bunch of bullshit. That ‘one rep’ was about as deep as you go when hovering over the toilet to take a crap in a port-a-john.

While that may do something for your ego or psyche, it does absolutely nothing for your legs. And that is why you walked in to the gym this morning. So here’s some friendly advice that you can choose to either take or keep fooling yourself:

LOWER THE WEIGHT AND LOWER THE DEPTH!

It’s simple when you back up a few steps and give it some thought. You probably begin with a warm-up set of 135 pounds and go ‘ass-to-grass.’ You know…the proper way to do a set. So why the fuck would you keep loading up the iron so each set has a shorter range of motion than the last? Not only will that be a waste of your time and energy, but you’re also risking injury.

If you blow out your knee, or even tweak you lower back, that will put your ass on the sideline for a while and forget about squatting again any time soon. So if you can legitimately handle three wheels on each side, go for it and bang out as many reps as you can for a power set. But get in at least three or four full working sets before feeding your ego.